


Words at my fingertip

by ephemeralfangirl



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:46:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8291386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralfangirl/pseuds/ephemeralfangirl
Summary: Kara's setting up Cat's office one evening, trying to cope with her status as Assistant Number Two.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is just tiny piece during the Siobhan debacle, set while Assistant Number One could do no wrong. Humph.

Kara looked at the white expanse of Cat’s desk and bit her lip. Sighing, she glanced around the mostly empty bullpen. Siobhan was long gone and it left Kara to do the office set up. She checked that the pens were full of ink and in place, she made sure the end of Cat stylus was straight because she had a tendency to emphasize with the tool as she wrote and break the bits. She put all the items on the desk back in place, Cat’s file drawer was in order of priority, all the documents properly tabbed and reviewed. The bar was stocked, the candy dish was full, the executive washroom didn’t contain embarrassing items for the cleaning crew to find (the single shredded stocking and lace tanga were something they never spoke of). Her job was done.

On the scale of importance, this task was both high and low. It was a menial job that didn’t have much of an impact on the day-to day-running of CatCo, but it sure kept Cat from tossing the out of place items in the garbage. They never spoke of it, but it had happened once and then her boss had made her reorder them as they were considered damaged.

It was a chore she had done by rote before, but since Siobhan had been hired as Assistant Number One (the term still sat in Kara’s stomach like Kryptonite laced lead), this was the only time she was allowed in the office on her own. Heck, smelling Cat’s perfume lingering after the woman was gone was probably the closest she had been to her boss in the last week. 

She missed Cat.

She had been forced to realize just how much earlier this evening when the older woman had walked past her desk, giving a list of instruction to Siobhan, not even sparing her a glance. There seemed to be something so final about it, as if she had seen the rest of her life stretched out before her and her breath had caught.  She had stared as Assistant Number One gave her a smug smile. The brunette had waited until Cat was safely inside her elevator before she had given Kara the list before she had picked up her purse and had sauntered out.

Kara had looked at the list, the barely legible scrawl blurred by tears she had refused to let fall. She’d taken as deep a breath as she could and had started moving, the activity barely masking the hollowness in the pit of her stomach. She had stepped into the glass office and she had been assailed by the scent and feel of what had come to be as much her home as her apartment and she’d felt like a stranger in it. She had looked at the big empty chair and she had wished to see the blond head bent over work. She had longed to see it rise and to be examined with almost casual disinterest before being told what she needed to hear in her favorite voice. The yearning hadn’t solidified the vision and Kara’s heart had hurt when she’d thought of how, even if Cat had been there, she wouldn’t have been welcomed, wouldn’t have been comforted. She would have been ignored or dismissed. And it wouldn’t have had changed the longing one bit.

The feeling was pervasive in a way not much else had ever been and it had grown the longer she spent working in the CEO’s space. Kara let out a shuddering breath and put her hand on the desk to steady herself. There was a pain around her heart that made it hard to move. So she didn't, she simply took deep breath after deep breath, trying to get back to being soothed by the room; by Cat’s lingering presence. 

When she had come in for that 10:15, she had never expected to care this much. There was something about Cat, the softness under the public abrasiveness maybe, that just grabbed her by the heart and didn't let go no matter what. That feeling she didn’t dare label was, on a normal day, completely fine. It just lived under the skin, barely registering because it fell into the same realm as breathing and her powers, it was simply a part of her. She could live well with it and build her life around it, but these days, it colored everything. 

Every slight, insult, display of anger or indifference chipped at her and was made worse by it. Every day she stood on the outside looking in, a stranger in the only place that had ever felt completely her own and she wanted back in. Not in the glass office, not her place in the company, but in Cat’s orbit. It was the only place where she had ever felt completely safe. Even if Cat’s ever shifting whims may have made it seem like she had built her home on the edge of an eroding cliff, on certain things Cat never changed. If you were on the extremely short list of people she cared about, she would go to the end of the Earth for you and Kara had believed she had a spot on that list. Maybe it had been a postscript, but it had been enough. Kara had depended upon that. Now, Cat had altered the rules and Kara was lost. 

The only thing that didn’t change was that feeling. It was just growing, fed by the hurt and the longing, until she felt like her skin would split to let it out. She wanted to sometimes, to fly up until the air thinned and scream it into the void where no one who could tell her that what she felt was a terrible idea. Maybe if she did, she wouldn't be so ready to burst. 

Maybe she didn't have to go so far.

Kara looked around to see if anyone was looking at her and she put a single finger on the desk. She closed her eyes and started forming the Kryptonian symbols. The desk was cold to the touch, but Kara didn’t care. It wasn’t the surface that mattered, it was the feelings.

Her mother had taught her that on Krypton. They had gone to see her father at the university. His office had been both big and small to the young Kryptonian. The large window displaying the spires of Argo City had dwarfed everything in it.  Alura had only brought her in quickly, to greet her father, but he had been absent. It hadn’t mattered to her mother. She had gone to his desk and had traced a message with her finger. 

“You forgot a pen,” had seemed the most logical thing for Kara to say. 

Her mother had smiled, had extended a hand for Kara to come and join her. Curious, Kara had stood before her mother and had looked at the unaltered surface. 

“I’m not leaving a message to read, Little One,” Alura had said, brushing the wispy hair back. “I’m leaving him love. It doesn’t matter that he can’t see it. He will feel it. Love should always be felt.”

“Should I leave him some too?”

“Only if you mean it. Love shouldn’t just rely on words, Kara, because they can be empty. But if you say them, you must mean them.”

Kara had thought hard and smiled, writing her message to her father. The words were invisible, but they had blazed bright in Kara’s mind. She'd smiled at her mother, a tiny flame lit within her.

“Will he write me one too?”

Alura had put both hands on her cheeks, had forced her head back and kissed her forehead. “Maybe he will, Little One, but maybe he won't. You can't ask him, though, because love can only be given freely. If it is forced out of someone, it is very much not love.” 

Her mother had looked so sad that Kara had hugged her around the middle, safe in the knowledge that she had been cherished. From that afternoon on, she had written love messages only to her mother, father and Astra whenever she felt like it. 

When her aunt Lara had been pregnant, it had been such an oddity that Kara had been fascinated with the child growing inside. She'd put her hands on her aunt’s belly, feeling the babe within move and she had written him how she was going to love him and protect him and be the best cousin that Rao had ever shined his light on. 

On the night of Krypton’s destruction, Kara had pressed her hand on the glass of her pod, her parents already gone, even if they had stood before her and she'd pleaded with silent words:

_Come with me._

_Don't make me go._

_I love you._

 

Her mother had followed her hand move and Alura’s tears had fallen harder until the pod had launched Kara into the unknown.

In the years since she had landed, Kara had only done this three times. 

She'd traced her gratitude to Jeremiah on the trunk of the tree she, Alex and Eliza had planted in the garden to have a place to come and think of him. 

Sudden awareness of love had been left on the skin of Alex's left forearm in the time it took for her sister's right hand to be set in a cast. It had been broken when the elder danvers sister had  punched Michael Thompson to stop him from bullying Kara. She'd traced them over and over while they could hear him screaming from three doors down, the sound terrible and wordless as the doctor had wired his jaw shut. 

The third time had been the longest. She'd just finished packing Eliza's car so they could drive to National City University for her first time away from her new home. She'd stopped at the front door, her hand hesitant on the knob. She'd taken deep breath and had written of gratefulness, of thanks, but mostly of the love she felt for the woman who had taken her in without questions. Eliza had opened the door, just as Kara had finished writing her note. She'd taken one look at the tearful girl and had hugged her tight, telling her it wasn't goodbye, just a new step. 

Now here she was, so long after that day but just as lost with words bursting out of her. Her finger was on a white desk, drawing symbols nobody understood anymore, but that meant the world to her, for the only person on this planet she meant them for. She knew why she had never put it into words before. If she had, even if only to herself, they would become real. Though, she had to admit, nothing could feel more real than the hole in her heart and the searing pain that came with it. 

When she was done, Kara didn’t linger. She walked away, relief easing the choke hold tears had on her throat, the words blazing as brightly in her mind as the first time she'd done this for her father. She picked up her bag, her phone and took a deep breath, hoping her mother had been right, hoping the words wouldn’t fade. She left them behind, mouthing them to herself over and over on the way out of the building.

_I love you._

_Come back to me._

_We are just beginning._

_I won't let go._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, while this is not a songfic, it was inspired by Adele's "Can't let go". Which everybody should hear at least once, cause it's amazing. Just saying.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked it. :D


End file.
